Oscars 2020: Joker leads pack – but Academy just trumps Baftas for diversity

Posted on January 13, 2020 by Admin

Joker nominated for 11 awards
1917, The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood up for 10
Little Women and Parasite take six nominations
Cynthia Erivo sole non-white acting nominee
Oscar nominations: full list for 2020

Less than a week since Bafta’s strikingly white and male awards shortlist met with widespread criticism – including from the organisation’s own chief executive – the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released a set of nominations whose small concessions to diversity seem striking by contrast.

Cynthia Erivo is nominated for best actress for her role in a biopic of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, and Parasite – Bong Joon-ho’s acclaimed South Korean black comedy – is up for six awards, including best director and best picture.

Golden Globes: who will win and who should win the film awards? | Peter Bradshaw

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Admin

Will The Irishman clean up? Or Marriage Story? And how will Once Upon a Time in Hollywood fare? Peter Bradshaw offers a lowdown of the main categories and his predictions and omissions

The best film category is dominated – just like everything else in the cultural conversation around movies – by Netflix, which has the majority of the nominees: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and Fernando Meirelles’s The Two Popes.

Alan Alda: ‘It’s amazing that most of us live as if we’re not gonna die’

Posted on November 14, 2019 by Admin

The former M*A*S*H star has Parkinson’s disease – but remains optimistic. He talks about his new film, Marriage Story, how actors can help heal political division and working with Woody Allen

‘Would you like a beer?” asks Alan Alda, tall and elegant in black raincoat, grey jacket and blue jeans as he walks through his offices near the Lincoln Center in New York. The actor, director and science communicator warmly greets Einstein, a female half bernese mountain dog, half border collie. “Smartest dog I ever met,” Alda’s assistant later observes.

The urbane 83-year-old star of M*A*S*H, The West Wing and The Aviator settles in a glass-walled meeting room, acknowledges that we are here to talk about his new film, Marriage Story, but says he is happy to talk about anything. Over the next hour, he will discuss God, mortality, his mother, podcasting, science, Woody Allen and how he is, so far, unbowed by Parkinson’s disease.

Battle of the sexes: why this year’s Oscars will be a gender war

Posted on October 31, 2019 by Admin

From Little Women and Bombshell on one side and The Irishman and The Two Popes on the other, the Academy will have to tread a careful line picking this year’s nominations

British politicians are not the only people preparing for the campaign trail; Hollywood’s awards-season schmooze offensive has also begun. Gala ball dates are being added to diaries, academy voters are being targeted and a clutch of frontrunners is emerging. Trends – most of them worrying – are also appearing.

In summary, this year it is “boy films” v “girl films”. A gaping gender divide seems to have split the field. On the girls’ side, we have two well-received titles: Bombshell, dramatising the sexual harassment scandal at Fox News, and Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women. Both are stories of female defiance at the male-dominated status quo, and are cast with an embarrassment of awards-bait: Little Women features Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson and Laura Dern; Bombshell has Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie and Allison Janney.